Overview

Benefits
Harms

Note: Separate PDQ summaries on Oral Cancer Prevention and Lip and Oral Cavity Cancer Treatment are also available.

There is inadequate evidence to establish whether screening would result in a decrease in mortality from oral cancer.

Magnitude of Effect: No evidence of benefit or harm.

Study Design: Evidence obtained from one randomized controlled trial.

Internal Validity: Poor.

Consistency: Not applicable (N/A).

External Validity: Poor.

Harms have not been systematically studied and cannot be quantified based upon the literature. However, there are some unavoidable harms that would be associated with routine screening, including:

• Detection of cases that are already incurable, leading to increased morbidity.
• Unnecessary treatment associated with overdiagnosis.
• Psychologic consequences of false-positive tests.
• Misdiagnosis due to variability in assessment of biopsies.

Magnitude of Effect: Unknown.

Study Design: Observational studies.

Internal Validity: Poor.

Consistency: N/A.

External Validity: Poor.